Trends in talent management

Success in 21st century’s organizations is directly related with the quality of their employees.

Nowadays, the main key to achieve an increase in the income statement, enhance the company’s growth and face new challenges lies in talent management. HR departments are aware of the considerable effort required to carry out such a goal in a moment when the digital talent gap is narrowing, and many companies are reshaping their recruitment and talent retention policies to join this unstoppable trend.

The first step towards excellence in this field is to rethink the organizational culture in order to build a work environment where employees are comfortable and allow creativity and motivation to be enhanced. Employees must perceive their workplace as a space where they’re going to be challenged and motivated to grow professionally, and where their sense of belonging is going to be encouraged: they must feel they have a purpose.

According to a study by LinkedIn, three out of four goal-oriented employees are satisfied with their role in the company. And this is something reflected on the corporations’ final income statement: almost 60% of organizations which promote this policy in an articulate and structured fashion have experienced a growth by more than 10% during the last three years of activity.

On the other hand, HR departments rise to the challenge from perspectives different to the usual, such as designthinking, a methodology focused on promoting effective innovation inside organizations. This new working approach is rooted on employee’s sensitivity and his ability to solve problems in order to meet the needs of his clients in a technologically-feasible way, always with business sense in mind.

Another alternative is provided by the employeejourney mapping, more oriented to job performance, which serves as way to better understand the problems of a specific worker so that his efficiency can be improved. In order to carry this initiative out, many companies argue that organizations must be well aware of their employees’ working processes and understand the challenges they face in the workplace. Once that is accomplished, they can identify the stimuli that have a negative impact on their duties and are prepared to provide them with a helpful response so that expected results are achieved eventually.

Customization is one of the best techniques brought by the digital society to approach success regarding talent management. The progress in Big Data technologies has led to a better understanding of the workers’ situation in the company. Data analytics made possible peopleanalytics, or the use of computerized tools capable of assessing the information related to employees and candidates to determine what could be their best contribution to the organization.

Its influence on personnel selection processes and the redirection of existing talent is decisive and major companies are well aware of this. 61% of corporations consider peopleanalytics systems as a necessary transition process inside the organizational structure of their HR departments, according to a survey by Deloitte.

Promoting continuous training inside companies is another of the initiatives which help people to feel committed to their duties. According to a report conducted by the consultancy firm Capgemini, 48% of employees would be willing to develop digital skills, even if the cost was on them and they were taught outside the workplace. However, although it’s true that talent is usually linked to hard skills (the more technical side of a worker’s knowledge), the increasing importance of the so-called soft skills, such as critical thinking or leadership and teamwork capabilities, is already being addressed.

Speaking of this, and to optimize business performance, almost every industry is becoming aware of a subject that will prove beneficial not just for income statements. This trend invests on the diversity and heterogeneity of work teams, something that, according to the United Nations, if ratios of men and women at the workplace were equated, would result in a 12% increase in the economy of OCDE countries.

The benefits brought along by diversity in the workplace aren’t something to argue about in the world of large corporations, either. Eight out of ten interviewees in a survey by Deloitte acknowledged that the implementation of inclusion strategies entails an advantage in the mid-term for companies, having a direct impact not only on the brand, but also on the performance and compliance of corporate goals.